How WebBoss Reached 200 Customers and GBP20K Monthly Revenue on a Team of Four (Interview with CEO Kev Wilson)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Kev Wilson. He founded his company webboss.io in 2011 along with his son Luke. They put over forty thousand hours of development into the system and they believe it's the world's most powerful CMS website builder and hosting platform. It's already used by many of The UK's largest companies and August 19 sees WebBoss launched globally as a feature deal by AppSumo. Kev, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, sure. Okay.

WebBoss as a WordPress Alternative

Nathan Latka

00:24So what is this? I mean, people think of this like an alternative to WordPress?

Kev Wilson

00:28>> Absolutely. I mean, every time we see a new system come up, everybody says this is the alternative to WebBoss to WordPress, sorry. And we look at them and they're not, but we really are. I mean, we spent a long time developing this. Probably in hindsight, could have done things a bit differently.

Founding Story and UK Investment Landscape

Nathan Latka

00:45How long? When did you launch?

Kev Wilson

00:47>> We actually launched about five years ago, really. But we were forced into that. So in England, the investment for this sort of project isn't the same as The US. Yeah. Our investors You've are raised money.

The 2015 Fundraise and Valuation

Nathan Latka

01:00How much? About $500,000. When did you do that raise?

Kev Wilson

01:04>> That was in about six years ago.

Nathan Latka

01:06Okay. So in like 2015?

Kev Wilson

01:08>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

01:09Okay. And so you raised sorry, you said 500,000?

Kev Wilson

01:13>> Yes. Yep.

Nathan Latka

01:14And and and what was that on a cap? Like, was it did it have a valuation on it or no?

Kev Wilson

01:18>> Yeah. We did those just on against a million pounds basis.

Nathan Latka

01:22So Pre money or post money?

Kev Wilson

01:24>> That was pre.

Nathan Latka

01:26Okay, so 1.5 posts. And then you're building now today. So talk me tell me about a customer that's using you guys. How do they use you?

Enterprise Customers: Reach PLC and Ryman

Kev Wilson

01:32>> What we've done is because I say we were trying to we wanted a couple of million investment, has been very hard to get in The UK for our sort of product, bit old fashioned over here, most investors. So we started looking for referral partners. So I went to some of the big boys like Reach plc, so I don't if that means anything to you, but they're the biggest media group in the country. They own virtually every

01:53>> newspaper title here. And we now do we've had to sort of open up a service division as well to finance our development. So that's how we've been growing the business. Not ideal for a SaaS product, but it's been sort of working for us together as where we are. So we've got major companies like Reach PLC and when they are they're selling advertising to their customers, and they need a decent website to do it through. So we

02:17>> do all the bespoke systems for their for their customers.

Revenue History and COVID Impact

Nathan Latka

02:21Mhmm. How much revenue how much revenue did you guys do in your first year in 2015?

Kev Wilson

02:26>> It says it's not that much then because it's a bit of a slow build. We're doing now the time I think back then, is we're doing around about 20,000 a month now.

02:39>> Back then, it's probably about 5 or 6, I would say. And it's not grown a lot, but we've had to sort of split our work between development and service, which is not really what we want to do.

Nathan Latka

02:50And if you're doing $20,000 a month now in revenue, what were you doing a year ago?

Kev Wilson

02:55>> Well, COVID, pretty much the same actually, unfortunately COVID because we were using referral partners, one of our business. I mean, our biggest one made 500 staff redundant during COVID. So

Nathan Latka

03:06Yep. Okay. So about the same. That makes sense. Now how that's just your recurring revenue. How much of services revenue will you do this year?

Kev Wilson

03:14>> We'll probably do about the same again in service, I would say. Got another company we've just started working with, Ryman, one of the biggest stationers in The UK, two twenty stores, and we've just done a white label version of the product for them. So that's an exclusive

Nathan Latka

03:30So Kev, just to be clear, so last year, how much total revenue did you do and how much of that was services?

Kev Wilson

03:37>> Last year would have been about recurring revenue, about 4,000 and 16,000 in services.

Nathan Latka

03:47Okay. Last year, so so the no. What did you do the whole year, though? So add up all your revenue the whole year?

Kev Wilson

03:53>> Yeah. No. We would last year, we would've about 20,000 through the COVID period.

Nathan Latka

03:57Yes. You did so so for 20,000 the whole year or 20000 a month?

Kev Wilson

04:01>> Oh, Sorry. A month. A month. Okay. That's what I'm asking. The whole year I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:04The whole year in '20 Yeah.

04:06If you did a 250,000

04:07in total revenue, how much was services?

Kev Wilson

04:10>> About three quarters of that.

Nathan Latka

04:12Okay, got it. So about 200, about 180,000 was services and the rest was SaaS. How do you, how are you transitioning people from services into the SaaS model?

Marketing Budget and Fundraising Plans

Kev Wilson

04:22>> At the moment, we've we've had no marketing budget whatsoever. So this is what we've been trying to raise funds for the moment.

Nathan Latka

04:27How much do you wanna raise?

Kev Wilson

04:29>> We can do with a couple of million, really. Like what? 2,000,000?

Nathan Latka

04:32Yeah. And what valuation do you wanna raise on?

Kev Wilson

04:36>> Which is possible, obviously.

04:40>> I'm looking at five to six.

Nathan Latka

04:42And why why five to six?

Kev Wilson

04:44>> Just the amount of development we've done. I mean, what it would cost to actually make our platform now. Yeah. How

Team Size and Engineering Setup

Nathan Latka

04:51many many folks on the team? Is it still you and Luke?

Kev Wilson

04:55>> And we've got four at the moment. We did it. We got we got a bit higher sometimes. We get a bit busier. We might need a few more designers and to keep the service model going. Mhmm. But the core developers, there's just two, it's Luke and Ollie.

Nathan Latka

05:07Mhmm. And so okay. So two developers, do you develop two or no?

Kev Wilson

05:10>> Not really. I usually come up with ideas and get them to do the work.

Nathan Latka

05:13Yeah. That's that's good. You you you do all the fun stuff and

Kev Wilson

05:15>> then they do all the all the labor, you know?

SaaS Customer Count and Churn

Nathan Latka

05:18Yeah. Alright. Fair enough. Are you guys profitable today?

Kev Wilson

05:22>> I'm in borderline breakeven.

Nathan Latka

05:24Okay. And how many customers are paying you something monthly? Monthly SaaS?

Kev Wilson

05:29>> Monthly SaaS is around about 200.

Nathan Latka

05:32200?

Kev Wilson

05:32>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

05:33Okay. And are they sticky? What does churn look like?

Kev Wilson

05:36>> It's virtually nil. Honestly, it is. We've got customers going back mean, I know we started rolling apps properly four probably about four years ago. Before that, we were obviously building sites to test it, and those customers are still with us, and we're just on, in fact one customer going back almost ten years, is just having a new rebuild done, you know. So there's no need to leave. That's what's different about WebBoss. It really is everything. You

06:01>> can expand it.

Nathan Latka

06:02Well, it sounds like it sounds like they pay you like 2 or $3k to build the thing, but whether it's the app or the website, and then they can manage updates, color changes, things like that using WebBoss. They're never gonna cancel.

Kev Wilson

06:14>> Absolutely. Yeah. And also, can archive a design. You can also stack multiple designs. So for seasonal changes like Easter, Christmas, you can have them and just switch them at any time. Mhmm. It doesn't you can like your designs the way we built the system, it's modular. So if you want to change your design, you haven't got onto your content, it just flips it automatically.

Nathan Latka

06:33And Kev, how did you guys split up equity? How much do you own?

Kev Wilson

06:36>> Not as much as we would like to really, because I say, investment in The UK is a bit different, but me and Luke own just over half of the company.

Nathan Latka

06:44Okay. And anyone else own anything besides the investors or it's just you, Luke, the investors?

Kev Wilson

06:48>> Just me, Luke, and the investors.

Nathan Latka

06:50Okay. Would you sell the company, say, for 1,000,000 all cash upfront?

Kev Wilson

06:54>> No.

Nathan Latka

06:55You say that very quickly.

Kev Wilson

06:56>> I know because worth a lot more than that.

Nathan Latka

06:59How much did you sell for?

Kev Wilson

07:01>> Not in any rush to sell at the moment because, I mean, we hope AppSumo will really sort of get us out there. I mean, the big problem we've got is we've had no marketing. If we try and sell directly, people never heard of us. Yeah. To put some the company like Reach or Ryman are selling because I've heard of them, so they'll buy it without question. So we've got the funds for marketing, but I think hopefully

07:21>> AppSumo with a featured deal with AppSumo, they approached us as well. It goes out on the August 19, so hopefully.

The AppSumo Deal and Lifetime Pricing

Nathan Latka

07:29How did App lifetime deals, which is what AppSumo is known for, can destroy the economics of a SaaS business for a variety of reasons. How did they convince you to give and agree to a lifetime price point?

Kev Wilson

07:41>> Because I'm looking at if we had to raise the money and invested that in marketing, I'd quite probably do the same to get the same amount of return, and it's only a short thing for a lifetime deal. And if we get that What do

Nathan Latka

07:54you mean?

07:55Is it hold on.

Kev Wilson

07:56>> Is it lifetime or is it a short term thing?

07:57>> It's lifetime. So it's lifetime. But we can I mean, if we sell 10,000, I hope we could, you know, we do 10,000 sales, that would fit into our running costs quite comfortably, as sort of an ongoing cost? I'm not worried about that. Yes, I can understand what people think like that, But to get our name out globally, I mean, were able to spend a few $100,000 in marketing to do that. And that's possibly what it's gonna

08:27>> cost. It's not gonna cost us that much in servicing those sites.

Nathan Latka

08:30I mean, you sort of will get this, it's like a drug, you'll get the hit of initial cash from the AppSumo deal. But if you can't convert any of those into monthly recurring plans to grow your 4,000 a month and like stacking sales, it just all goes away the month or two after And you're stuck supporting thousands of new people that love deals that are gonna overwhelm your support channels, that's all you're gonna do all day

Converting AppSumo Users to Monthly Plans

Nathan Latka

08:50every day. So how do you think about that?

Kev Wilson

08:53>> Because we've got to we're always adding to the system. So there's always gonna be no updates. Not that we're gonna be doing a fulfillment package as a fulfillment partner we're working with. A lot of companies want to work with us. The problem we have we have that the end users don't know about us. I say that's why we need marketing. So we will add the fulfilment plugin to the system modules, we call them. And so that's

09:14>> an extra monthly charge if you want that. So we're adding things all the time.

Nathan Latka

09:17How many do you think these are people on AppSumo are people, they're like JCPenney shoppers, they love deals, they're Groupon shoppers, right? So how do you convert them into a monthly recurring plan? What gives you so much confidence that you're just going to add a feature and they're going to start paying monthly?

Kev Wilson

09:32>> Well, to be honest, I'm not looking at the AppSumo that was the main conversion, I'm just looking at AppSumo promotion is getting our name out there from a lot of people because they once they've bought their deals, that's it, isn't it? They're not gonna be buying. If they want another site, they're gonna have to pay the full whack for it. If they are developers, they're gonna have to pay the ongoing rate, which is normal.

Nathan Latka

09:54That's well, that's that's why I'm asking you. So you believe that a large chunk of these folks will start paying you monthly in the future?

Kev Wilson

10:01>> Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:02Yeah. This is not a trend that I've seen with AppSumo customers from others that have done launches, which is why I always ask the question what the plan is, because I think it's a great way to get your name out there. But if there's not a clear plan to drive upsell revenue, it can be dangerous for the business. There's many SaaS companies, by the way, have done AppSumo deals that have gone out of business. And so

10:19then how does that, you know, the customers if they bought lifetime deal, but you're only in business for a year and then you shut down, how does that make them feel? When you promised a lifetime, you only gave them a year.

Kev Wilson

10:28>> I totally agree with that. I get that as well. But I mean, if you're a developer and use our system, you're gonna be doing more than one site a year, aren't Somebody's making a living out of it.

WebBoss vs WordPress and Wix

Nathan Latka

10:37I I don't know. I don't I don't know. How many how many developers are on AppSumo?

Kev Wilson

10:41>> They I can't I won't give the figures they've given us, but they've given us quite a fair fair number. 2,000. You know? So

10:49>> we I don't need that many users.

Nathan Latka

10:51And they why use you over WordPress or these free website builders?

Kev Wilson

10:56>> Because what our system can do. I mean, system does much more than WordPress. I mean, if you, WordPress is a page editor, isn't it? A lot of plugins other people have made. WebBoss is a very sophisticated page editor with all the plugins you need already built into it. So when when people tend to once they've used our system, tend to stick with it. As I say, you don't have its churn. People like the system. It's more

11:24>> it's it's not as complex as WordPress to build a site with. I mean, it's not an easy web builder. Don't get me wrong. I won't pretend it's Wix. We don't want it to be. But it's very easy to add things to it with what's built in there. So once you've used our system, you wouldn't want to go back to WordPress.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

11:42Alright. Well, we'll see what happens, Kev. In the meantime, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, you said you don't read a ton of books, we're gonna skip it. Number two, is there a is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Kev Wilson

11:52>> Apart from you.

Nathan Latka

11:53Oh, that's you can't now you can't you you should have gave me all these compliments at the beginning, then I would have gone easier on you, you know?

Kev Wilson

12:02>> I'd say it's I like the big guys. I mean, they were in The UK, Richard Branson, to be honest. I mean Yeah. Mean, that's

Nathan Latka

12:08Number three.

Kev Wilson

12:09>> I like Elon Musk. I like the big ones. I mean, I like Elon Musk because he's out of the box.

Nathan Latka

12:13Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building WebBoss?

Kev Wilson

12:18>> I didn't do that side of it, so I wouldn't even want to answer that.

Nathan Latka

12:22What's your favorite online tool?

Kev Wilson

12:24>> I'm going from WebBoss, actually.

Nathan Latka

12:27Okay. Except WebBoss.

Kev Wilson

12:28>> Yes. I don't know any joke. Yeah. I know. I wanted to go there. Sorry.

12:34>> It's a good point, actually, because I don't tend to do anything else.

Nathan Latka

12:37Okay. Great. We'll we'll skip it. Number four. How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Kev Wilson

12:41>> About six.

Nathan Latka

12:42And what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos?

Kev Wilson

12:45>> We only have one.

12:46>> Married with three kids.

Nathan Latka

12:48Three kids. Okay. Very cool. And how old are you?

Kev Wilson

12:51>> I'm not telling you that. You can skip that.

Nathan Latka

12:54Okay. No problem. Last question. What's something you wish you when you were 20?

Kev Wilson

13:00>> How to structure an investment deal properly?

Nathan Latka

13:02How to what?

Kev Wilson

13:03>> Structure an investment deal properly.

Nathan Latka

13:06Are you not on good terms with your investors?

Kev Wilson

13:11>> It could have been better. Not bad. We're not on bad terms, when I said that we didn't know, we were new to this when we got involved. And I think if I knew what I know now, it's been handled a lot differently.

Closing Summary

Nathan Latka

13:23Mhmm. Yep. Alright, guys, there we have it. Webboss.io, easily create websites and apps. They were doing $20,000 a month about a year ago, still doing about $20,000 a month because of COVID. They've been flat, but they've got over 200 customers. They're about breakeven today with a team of four. Kev, thanks for taking us to the top.

Kev Wilson

13:38>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

13:40One more thing before you go. We have

13:42a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go

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14:31or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime,

14:54I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs

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15:15the comments.

Kev Wilson

15:16>> See you.